A Pearl Lost at Sea

[amyselia 2962]

A PEARL

LOST AT SEA

✢✽✢

 

((Art by Thomas Gainsborough, 1794))

 

A painting of Claude Élisabeth Hermine Ashford de Savoie, c.1825, placed affront a backdrop of endless blue skies, embodying the girl’s inestimable potential. Such was commissioned by Lady Mary Casimira Othaman on the eve of Claude’s 7th birthday.

 

 

---

 

THE PEARL OF MONT ST. LUCIEN

 

 

---

 

Claude’s bantam hand hovered in a stupor above the nape of the painting’s silver frame. Her gaze was hailed in unbesmirched admiration, shoulders enveloped by the buxom arm of Lady Mary Casimira, whose sweet words whispered pleasantries in congratulations, “It’s as beautiful as you, little pearl.”

 

The de Savoie’s lips aspired to a sheepish grin, and yet there remained a sinking feeling in her flittered fingers. She could see it in the painting: an unexplainable malevolence hungered in those deep velvet eyes meant to reflect her own, competing with her for the challenge of rumination, a challenge she so easily signed herself to in the foolishness of her youth.

It was barely a glimpse. A flicker of a moment. A one… two… three and-! An abrupt retract of the palm towards the chin; a backwards stumble and an ejection of dismay exhaled from rosy-tinted lips. Her chocolate-brown eyes glossed in vexation across the expanse of the art piece, each sweep of vision forcing her to digest its radiant glamor. Its elegance. Its allure. Make it stop.

 

Memories began fleeting and besieging her undeveloped mind all at once in a molestation of failure, embarrassment, disappointment, hysteria, tears, tears and tears. Lace-gloved hands aspired to her temples as she began a whine of anguish, thrashing inevitable whilst the petite girl unloosened herself from the happiness of her exterior. Make it stop.

 

Around her piqued countenance the music of harmonious strings began to reverberate, each boasting a powerful boom which drew a stalwart rhythm in unison. Lady Mary’s shouts began in tandem, and the music ran upwards like a stampede of wildebeests streaming past an attacking lioness, strong and willful with each beat, drowning out the cries of the frightened socialite as she witnessed Claude’s dismantling- her absconsion from reality. Her drowning.

 

And she fell to the sea.

 

Yet her body did not sink. 

It remained afloat above the waves, ransacked by the turbulence of the surf. Every second another wave would strike, engulfing her in a lambastion meant to cudgel and hammer down to her already bruised bones.

All the impacts made an imprint, devastating her with the taunting words of the crashing current made to beat the spirit and remind her of her place. For she was meant to remain there, teetering at the surface but never able to submerge. They scowled at her, the thrashing sound of the current a cachinnation of arrogance as they filled her ears with the salt of the sea: “You can not join them there. Would you like to see the reef? It has colors you do not deserve. It is too beautiful for a girl of your birth. It has creatures you could never par up to. They are infinitely more accomplished than yourself.” They were waters tainted in venom to erode away the fibres of her innocence.

 

And who were the waves but the figures of her past? A tempestuous father, an uncaring mother. A city to whom she owed her welcoming but was not welcomed in return. A sudden departure to a world she’d never known; Providence, with its pomp and stratus and hyper-constant reminders of worth. To them, was she but a foreign artifact? An imported commodity to be exhibited in a museum? She was the proclaimed pearl of Mont St. Lucien, an adornment wrought from the blue of the ocean.

And now here she was. This new world is her current, and she is simply floating above it, ears wading, humming with the busyness of sea life from below while she remains at the surface. Unable to fully deluge into its depths because she is too light, unable to swim because she is too young, unable to respire in the water like the others do. 

 

Crash. Another wave to coast atop her face and a subsequent chastening for air, petite fingers- pruned in the like of raisins -extending hopelessly to catch her out of this eternal cycle. The only air she could feel, could taste, were the wisps of wind intimating the tip of her nose…

Those wisps are what could save her.

 

The happiness of lady Mary's smile,

the shine of Amadea's locks,

the words that spew from Maisie's lips,

Amelia's bubbly little laugh,

Simon's harrowing embrace,

the love cast in Wilhelm's gaze,

Helena's brilliant kindness,

Philip’s unbridled protection,

Josephine’s infectious charisma,

Joseph’s unbound rowdiness

Milena's spirited schemes,

and Laurène's... tormenting company.

 

Each was a breath amidst her lungs and still her floating faltered for they were not enough to rip her from the façade of the sea. Every five breaths, there was another lick of disorder and a new threat of flying up and out to be melted by the sun’s fatal touch, the glow of her white skin molt like the parables of old foretell.

 

And… stop.

The waves. They broke in a triumphant uproar, split by the partition of a singular bested hand upon their surface, aquamarine water flourishing in walls to her left and right whilst the sea sand sheened with the new power of the sun’s reflection. Her eyes- glistening with the tears of her drowning -opened for the first time. In these waters- floating beside her and teasing her ears with a most malicious lilt of allurement -was a coral. A conch shell forged from pearl and pericarp, reverberating in a sound she’d not heard in a long time. A sound, indistinguishable. The sound of her family. Of Olivier, and Adeline, her most beloved parents. Of Laurène, Eugénie, Fernand and- who was that? A new one… Louis. A sweet and innocent boy, coughed and ailing, ready to be loved by his elder sister.

It was them. They were hers. All of them.

 

And she reached out for that conch shell, for she was no longer alone. 

She did not need to slip into the sea, for the sea now moved around her.

 

Spoiler

Just a cute rp post for my character...

If you know you know, simply put.

 

[Proddy 2415]

(( posted as a new comment oopsie, delete this please ))

[Proddy 2415]

Spoiler

 

 

 

NEW DAWN BECKONS

 

---

Louis Maximilien de Savoie had awoken from his slumber just as he had many times before. Sweating, writhing, ailing… screaming. Sweat trickled down from the crest of his forehead toward his flaxen brow as blurred visions of the fevered nightmares that haunted him within the realm of his dreams flashed throughout his mind. Vivid phantoms that the young Ashford could have sworn stalked him beyond the corporeal realm… he would catch glimpses of them at times, observing them from the shadowed vestiges of his bedchambers. Horned beasts, skeletal horrors, monsters with fangs…

 

Shaking himself from his frightful reverie and pushing himself into a seating position, Louis turned his head to regard the window. Luminescent light shone within, as birds chirped joyously and a gentle breeze roiled across the air. Outside… was life. The world, in all it’s astonishing glory and triumphant beauty. He only wondered how it all looked, beyond the protection of his home… he hoped with all his fibre he could see it all one day.

 

Indeed, his troublesome health and ailing physique left him stranded within the confines of his bedchambers most days. Do not let this one leave home, nor mingle with strangers… the physicians had insisted on every check-up. Even a common cold could put young Louis in grave danger.

 

And so with few other options, the infant de Savoie would experience life beyond the confines of Clermont in the only way he knew how. Brushing the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve, Louis would swipe a hand beneath his bed. Taking a sturdy book into hand and setting it upon his lap, flicking open the cover as he’d begin to trawl through the pages…

 

One page would become two. Two would become ten. Ten would become a hundred. As Louis read onward, he found himself whisked away into different eras, different centuries. Louis found himself reading of the Age of the Prophets - of the Exalted Godfrey and the Exalted Sigismund, their deeds and victories numerous and immemorial. He read of the Carrion Vochna, the Chivay Imperium. He read of his own ancestors in the form of Olivier and Guy, how they had lead the Order of Saint Amyas to providence through the bloody Dukes War and captured the hearts and minds of their countrymen. He read of the Horen Restoration, where the Ashen Dawn fell apart. And his favourite tale of all… Jon Renault’s confrontation, where three-hundred Savoyards had fell as martyrs in the throne room of Philip the Mad.

 

As Louis settled back against his pillow, his cold fever subsiding, he would begin to consider… that even the greatest of oaks could sprout from the smallest of seeds.

[zuziee 4004]

Reserve >:))

[valecu 2128]

Philip Michael smiles the Sun's Smile.